A new semi-autonomous robot is capable of traveling into a decommissioned nuclear reactor and safely dismantling it, piece by piece.
Typically, the robots that handle nuclear waste, like the one sent into the Fukushima reactor after it was destroyed by a tsunami, need to be remote-controlled every step of the way. This new robot, described in research published in the journal Robotics, can handle some things on its own — like detecting, grabbing, and cutting apart objects in its video feed.
The standard within nuclear decommissioning is for direct human-controlled remote tele-operation of robots, which is extremely difficult for the operators particularly given the complexity of nuclear decommissioning tasks.Fully autonomous solutions are unlikely to be deemed safe in the near future and so we have explored creating a semi-autonomous solution that sits between the two.
Other semi-autonomous robots designed to mitigate nuclear disasters can navigate on their own — this new one can automatically dismantle some of the obstacles in its path. For instance, a human operator can instruct the robot to pick up a pipe and cut it into pieces with four clicks of their mouse, per the press release.
“Tests show that operators using this system successfully outperform operators using the current joystick-based standard,” Taylor said. “It keeps the user in control of the overall robot but significantly reduces user workload and operation time.”
